And, according to a new research report, we are back there again.
그리고, 새로운 연구 보고서에 따르면, 우리는 다시 그 최고조의 버블 상태로 돌아갔다.

U.S. stocks are now about 80% overvalued on certain key long-term measures, according to research by financial consultant Andrew Smithers, the chairman of Smithers & Co. and one of the few to warn about the bubble of the late 1990s at the time.
금융 컨설턴트이자 스미서 앤 컴파니 사 회장이며, 1990년대 말의 버블에 대해 경고했던 몇 안되는 사람들 중 하나였던 앤드류 스미서스의 연구에 따르면, 미국의 주식들은 지금 특정한 핵심적 장기 측정법에 의해 평가해 볼때 약 80%나 과대평가 되었다.

The five dates listed at the start of this article, he says, are the only times since 1802, when data began being tracked, when stocks have been 50% or more overvalued according to these measures. And only two of those bubbles — 1929 and 1999, both of which were followed by disastrous crashes — were bigger than today.
그에 따르면, 이 기사의 초기에 쓰여진 다섯 년도들은 데이타들이 기록되기 시작했던 1802년 이후로 이 평가 방법에 따라서, 주식이 50%나 그 이상으로 부풀려졌던 오직 다섯번의 시기들이다. 그리고 그 중 두번이 버블만이 -1929년과 1999년 두 번다 파멸적인 폭락이 뒤따랐던 - 오늘날보다 더 큰 버블이었다.

That’s right: According to Smithers’s data, we are now in the third biggest bubble in U.S. history. (Oh, to jump ahead slightly, he also suspects it will go up even further before it comes back down.)
맞는 이야기다: 스미서스의 데이타에 따르면, 우리는 지금 미국 역사상 세번째로 큰 버블을 경험하고 있는 것이다. (오, 약간만 더 앞으로 나가보면, 그는 또한 이번 버블이 그 파멸을 맞기 전에 오히려 더욱 부풀려질수도 있다고 의심하고 있다.)

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Caveats to this alarming analysis? My MarketWatch colleague Howard Gold recently warned that fear can be dangerously seductive and influential when it comes to financial news, and he’s right. One should always take a deep breath and a pause for thought when reading anything deeply bearish (or bullish). Smithers has been bearish for some time, although he has not attempted to predict short-term moves in the market.

Today Smithers argues that stock prices are first likely to go even higher, because they are being driven upwards by two forces. The first is the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” program - the policy of flinging money at the banks in the hope some of it doesn’t stick, but finds its way into the wider economy. The second is corporate buying. Under-appreciated at the moment is that the top buyers of U.S. stocks these days are the companies themselves. U.S. companies have been borrowing aggressively and using the money to buy their own stock.

Probably the most important single implication of this analysis is not what is going to happen today or next week or even next year. It is to remind investors that stocks in aggregate have not always generated high returns. On the contrary, the stock market has throughout modern history gone in long waves, with booms of several decades, followed by mediocre or even disastrous returns for many years. Since hardly anybody studies history any more - and people on Wall Street think they can extrapolate the future from 20 years’ data - this one insight is likely to be heavily under-appreciated.

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If Smithers is right, what are the possible icebergs that could come along sooner or later and sink today’s market? He suggests several.

First, the Fed could be the cause as it winds down quantitative easing, a policy on track to end this year. As research by Smithers and others show, the stock market boom since 2009 has almost exactly tracked the rapid increase in the money supply.

Second, companies could stop borrowing and buying shares of their own stock. All the talk of fat corporate balance sheets hides the problem that U.S. companies have actually been increasing their leverage. To keep buying in stocks they would have to continue to do so - ad infinitum, perhaps.

The third could be a return to 1970s-style stagflation. Smithers notes that — contrary to what you may hear from the bulls — U.S. productivity growth has been slowing for years, and indeed has been tumbling recently. Such slowing growth, Smithers notes, could set the stage for a rise in inflation and interest rates, or a sluggish economy. Either, in turn, could weaken stock prices and investor optimism.

My take? The older I get the more I sympathize with Socrates, who supposedly said that the only thing he knew was how little he knew (or something similar). However, I give Smithers’s analysis a lot of weight. It is, after all, based on hard numbers, unsentimental analysis, and a deep study of history.